


One is the Loneliest Number

by suitesamba



Series: The Alphabet Series [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Family, Getting Together, Growing Older Together, M/M, Pre and Post Reichenbach, Reference to character death, Sussex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2020-12-13 18:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21002042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: First of ten chronological shorts in "The Alphabet Series" universe - Following the events of The Reichenbach Fall, John reflects on life before Sherlock and wonders if he'd do it all again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm continuing The Alphabet Vignettes - same universe - with a 1-10 series. Unlike the Alphabet Vignettes, these will flow chronologically.
> 
> These will appear as I have time and inspiration.
> 
> Reading "The Alphabet Vignettes" first isn't necessary, but may help.

To go from Afghanistan to London – from there to _here_ \- in the space of weeks, at least two of them spent so high on morphine that he didn’t even recall the transport back to England, had been disorienting and utterly, utterly depressing.

It was wrong – all of it wrong. The sound of street traffic outside his window. The smell of rain. The dampness. The pain in his shoulder that ebbed into a dull and ever-present ache. The fucking limp that had no injury behind it, but that persisted despite his best efforts to not feel the pain that wasn’t there.

He’d hated not having a purpose. He’d detested that room with its narrow bed and neutral walls and carpet on the floor and tea kettle with its frayed cord and his too-clean and polished boots arranged heel to heel against the bare wall beside the door. 

He’d hated the bloody mobile that didn’t ring, and the sodding laptop that wouldn’t cooperate and write his insipid blogs for him while he slept away the daylight hours.

He’d hated the twenty-six stairs between his door and the street, the seven between his bed and the loo, the two hundred and twelve between the top landing and the dingy café where he’d eat his breakfast and drink mediocre coffee and work the morning crossword instead of looking for locum work as they’d all advised he do.

He’d forgotten how to strike up a conversation with a strange in a park or bar, so he stared at the telly in the corner instead, looking up sharply, or perhaps longingly, when a medical transport helicopter on its way to Barts or St. Mary’s crossed low overhead, rumbling the ground. They weren’t his alarm clocks any longer and he’d mentally kick himself and get back to sipping his pint.

He’d changed it up after a month, found a take-out coffee place nearly as close as the café – two hundred and forty-six steps once he closed his door behind him. Carried the coffee to the park and sat on a bench and did the crossword in the morning sunlight, when they were lucky enough to have it, filling in all the spots he couldn’t solve with mild obscenities and self-deprecating words like _useless_ and _pathetic_ and _weak_ and_fuck this life_.

He’d never been just one before.

He’d had roommates all through uni and med school, girlfriends too, even lived with one for those last months before he’d joined up. Then his mates in the army. Never a moment alone there. Never a chance to feel alone either, no matter how _lonely_ he might be. How the hell could he be so alone in the middle of a city like London? 

He’d hold his take-away coffee cup with his left hand, determined that his actual injury wouldn’t be visible from the outside, that his hand and arm and shoulder would be as fit and strong as they’d ever been, even before the bullet that sent him home lifted him up by the shoulder then carried him several feet back before spitting him out onto the sand.

_Used up._ _Damaged._ _Useless.___

_ _He wouldn’t beg. Wouldn’t ask for help when really, he had no one to ask. Not his mates from uni and Barts who hadn’t joined up. Not old girlfriends who’d moved on. Not his sister who had her own demons to fight. Ella said he was doing well, besides, though he knew it was a sham. An act. The blog-that-wasn’t about a life that barely registered. Thoughts that strayed as he walked, dragging his perfectly good, uninjured leg behind him as he gripped his cane and moved gracelessly through the hours and days and weeks._ _

_ _But help often comes on the sly, when you’re looking the other direction. Mike introduced him that day to the one hundred percent solution to his misery, the anchor that grounded his drifting ship._ _

_ _Odd anchor that. An anchor more like a miniature model of the solar system, with the sun at 221B Baker Street and some predictable planets orbiting about – Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade and Molly and even Mycroft – and Sherlock as something unloosed, meteor or comet or asteroid or flecks of space rubble bouncing about, immune to gravity himself, but towing John along in his wake._ _

_ _Later, in those shadowy half-alive days following Sherlock’s suicide, when he’d gone back to Ella, desperate to _breathe_ again, he’d admit that he’d almost ignored Mike that day in the park, and almost missed his chance to meet Sherlock and struggle up those seventeen stairs to 221B for the first time._ _

_ __Would it have been better?_ she’d asked him after some time of quiet contemplation, folding one left over the other and leaning in just a bit. Better to have turned around when he’d seen Mike? Better to have avoided contact? Better, ultimately, to have missed meeting Sherlock altogether?_ _

_ _And he’d found himself shaking his head without even having to think about it._ _

_ _No. _ _

_ _Life now, without Sherlock, was a book without pages, a chilly night without stars, an ocean of sand and stones, chained to the surface of the dark side of the moon._ _

_ _But life without even the _memory_ of Sherlock?_ _

_ _God help him - If he had to choose again, he’d choose Sherlock._ _

_ _He’d choose that chance encounter with Mike in the park. The dinner at Angelo’s with that ridiculous candle. The not-so-nice cabbie. He’d choose Moriarty and the pool, Irene Adler in all her cold and calculating and stunningly naked beauty. Yeah. He’d take it all back - even Mycroft Holmes and his brolly and his unctuous, condescending uselessness._ _

_ _If he had to choose again, he knew he’d launch himself down the rabbit hole all over again, trying valiantly but unsuccessfully to talk himself back as he inched every closer to the brink. He’d do it, he thought, even if he _knew_ that he’d end up in this exact same spot with all the attendant hurt and pain and roiling emptiness. _ _

_ _He’d take this pain over the phantom ache in his leg, over the meaninglessness of the days spent wandering with take-out coffee growing cold in the cup. _ _

_ _“John?”_ _

_ _He blinked and let Ella’s figure come into focus again._ _

_ _“John – do you want to go on being alone, then?”_ _

_ _He squared his shoulders. Cleared his throat. Met Ella’s eyes so that he was actually _seeing_ her for the first time since he’d come back here._ _

_ _“No – no I don’t.”_ _


	2. Two Blinks of An Eye

The average human being blinks fifteen times in an hour. An individual blink lasts all of one-tenth of a second.

One blink. Four seconds. Another blink. 

Elapsed time – four point two seconds.

Inside those four point two seconds, Sherlock makes his near fatal error – and Mary makes her decision. 

Between one blink and the next, her finger squeezes the trigger and the bullet leaves her gun and furrows into his chest, stealing his breath from him and pulling every thread of his all points awareness back to himself. He stares down at the dark hole in his chest and manages only half a word as he topples backward like a felled tree. 

_Mar…_

Mary says something he cannot decipher. She’s a mile away, a lifetime ago, standing over him and blending into the fog of pain and confusion. His vision narrows. The feeling is precisely like every overdramatic author describes it yet not at all what he might have expected.

The room closes in around him until all he sees above him is a dark and narrow tunnel, a well of horrors in a world devoid of air and rent with pain.

His limbs are sandbags pinning him to the floor. Someone has placed a bag of bricks on his chest and dared him to breathe while they pile on more bricks and sand and mortar.

Four and a half seconds. 

Two blinks of an eye.

He won’t recall any of this when he wakes again, though he’ll be left with a vague, unsettling quiet. 

The scent of Clair de la Lune will never completely leave him.

ooOOO

His eyelids flutter open and her name is on his lips.

_Mary_.

He blinks his eyes. Counts slowly to four. Blinks them again as John’s face swims into focus. 

“Mary?” He laughs, and his eyes crinkle, and if Sherlock were himself he’d see the relief on the gaunt, grey face, the joy dancing in his eyes. John touches Sherlock’s arm. “She’ll be here soon. She’s on her way.” He wipes at his eye with the sleeve on the inside of his elbow and grins tiredly. “I’ll let her explain why you asked for her first, you stupid, stupid idiot.”

John is happy. Relieved. His words are endearments.

But John reads it wrong. He _always_ reads it wrong. 

_He’s too close to it,_ Sherlock reminds himself vaguely as he sinks into unconsciousness. His eyelids don’t flutter. They don’t blink. He feels John’s hand on his arm, on his shoulder, a brief squeeze. Fingers run down his arm in an almost caress.

John sighs. His exhale kicks up the dust in Sherlock’s mind palace.

John laughs again. A sharp intake of breath and a sound that is mirthful only in a dark and hopeless world. 

The laugh fades away and John is sobbing.

Sherlock sleeps.

~~~

When he wakes again, she is there, a warning on her lips. Her eyes are not at all as fearful as they should be. She thinks she has won. She thinks she has him exactly where she wants him.

She’s found his Achilles heel.

She is right, but oh so very wrong.

~~~

Later, when Rosie is walking and they’ve come back to 221B and Sherlock has John and Rosie and everything he’s always wanted, John will ask him why he forgave her.

They don’t speak of her often, though there is no conscious decision not to. Once the dust has finally settled and the cobwebs and skeletons have been cleared from the closets and some even from Sherlock’s mind, they unconsciously adopt a go-forward attitude and rebuild their lives around the rebuilt 221B. 

They’ll be lying in bed together – Sherlock’s bed - _their_ bed now, and John is beside him, propped up on one arm, tracing the scar on Sherlock’s chest. He’s as fascinated by that spot of shiny skin, the just perceptible divot, as Sherlock is fascinated by the battlefield of John’s damaged shoulder. 

Sherlock doesn’t answer John’s question because the truth is buried so deep within himself he can’t find it without picking the locks on a dozen doors in his mind palace and decoding the pirate’s treasure map he’s placed within.

Perhaps he doesn’t know why he forgave her. Perhaps he never really did. Perhaps he admired her for her clever lies, her subterfuge. Perhaps he hated her for it. But in the end, he’d given John what he wanted. What he thought he wanted. 

He doesn’t consciously admit that Mary was the only thing keeping that thin wall between them, keeping him from doing something stupidly, ridiculously sentimental.

Something even more selfless than killing a man, taking a life to protect her and giving up his own as forfeit.

Two blinks of an eye.

Long enough to press the trigger. Long enough to end the game. 

Not long enough for John to realise. To stop him. To still his hand.

Sherlock blinks, counts to four, blinks again.

Just exactly long enough for John to lean forward, wrap his arms around him tightly, bury his head in his neck and press a kiss to his shoulder. 

“Forget it – forget I asked,” he murmurs. “I know it’s complicated. I don’t even know why I brought it up.”

“You were feeling the scar,” Sherlock reminds him because it’s true and it bears saying. He takes a deep breath of courage as the locked doors in his mind palace dissolve into dust and when he speaks again, his voice is barely audible. “And I forgave Mary because I loved you.”

John stills against him, then pushes himself up until he is looking into Sherlock’s eyes. They stare at each other.

John blinks, then blinks again.

His face softens, and he smiles, and Sherlock returns that smile with the relief of a man who can finally stop holding his breath and breathe again because his answer, even so long in coming, was the right answer after all.


	3. Three Sheets to the WInd

There was a time he doesn’t care to remember, a time so foggy in his mind that what he does remember he doubts. A time after Mary died and before he reconciled with Sherlock. When he struggled to function. When Molly took Rosie on Friday nights so he could get out – get away for a breather – and sleep it off in the morning. A time when he drank too much – far too much. A time when he mourned his losses, each a separate punch to the gut, and over time, forgave everyone but himself. 

There were weeks, a bit of his past he forces himself to remember, when he drifted unanchored, 

There was a day – a clear, crisp Saturday morning just before sunrise, when he swayed on the pavement before St. Bart’s, three sheets to the wind, and Mary’s dying breath filled his sails, and Sherlock Holmes, dressed to the nines for a visit to Buckingham Palace, soared off the roof, ghostly white vestments lifting him to the heavens.

There was a minute, a blip in time, when the water reached his mouth, and he tipped his head back and strained upward on his toes, drowning in regret, reaching for a miracle.

There was a path, worn into the rug, where he paced with Rosie in those early days and late hours. Where one dreary night Sherlock appeared in his bedroom door, wrapped in a sheet, then shrugged into his dressing gown and held out his arms for the child. The sheet pooled on the floor behind him as he took up John’s path, the ghost of the man he was, the shadow of the father he soon would be.

There was a kiss, a quiet morning, a peaceful day. An evening together, a bottle of wine, a door left open, sheets turned down in invitation. There was a breeze through the window, a rustling of fabric, a feather-soft pillow, and sleep as restful as he’d ever had, Sherlock’s steady breathing a metronome of tranquility, a bellwether of change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I worked to make this longer but as someone smart once said, it is what it is.


	4. Four Letter Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From need to love to want to mine in 1000 words.

He isn’t sure of the order of things, but he’s checked off the boxes in his mind and he knows he’s progressed through stages. They’re four-letter-words, each of them, and laid end to end they spell the beginning and the middle but not yet the end.

It’s elusive, this ending he can’t yet claim, and he knows it’s not the end of everything, but the beginning of everything else. He can’t know if John reciprocates, doesn’t know if what he sees in his eyes, what he hears in his voice, the frisson he feels in the very air they share – if any of these things mean that John wants him too.

He knows John loves him. This – this is a truth borne of their shared loss. They’re fledglings, phoenixes both, risen from the ashes. John knows how to love, and to love properly. Husband once, father still, he’s worn the most demanding of roles, and he knows how love gives, and knows how love takes.

Sherlock loves, but doesn’t do it properly. Love pounds at the inside of his heart, the edges of his brain. It doesn’t seep through his skin and soften his edges. It doesn’t peek out his eyes and reveal his secrets. Sherlock’s love is a caged bird who’s lost her voice, a widow sorting through her box of memories in a quiet house, an empty room.

Love came to Sherlock like a slowly waxing moon, illuminating his world until he was bathed in a most surprising light. Exposed and naked, he hides in the shadows and waits.

He isn’t wrong. John loves him. 

But love is not a pull, but a balm. Love came to Sherlock in the face of a mad cabbie, in the glint of a revolver, when the wind was in his sails and there was nothing but air beneath his feet.

Love made him leave, and love made him return, and finally, finally, love made him want.

He cannot believe that love is no longer enough for him, but seems enough for John. Like love itself, he didn’t see it coming.

John is distracted. There is work, and there is Rosie. He mourns, perhaps not for Mary, but for a mother for his child, for the life he thought he wanted. He is comfortable here in 221B, his home, Rosie’s home, but he’s not comfortable with the idea of it, with what others see, with what they surmise. He is torn. 

Sherlock sees this. He is accomplished at seeing what others do not. But he can’t see what isn’t there. He can’t see that John wants him.

He knows nothing of these things, yet he knows John holds the white pawn. The first move is his.

When John makes his move, it comes in the wake of a sick child, a sleepless night, and a first dance with a beautiful lady.

And the pulling desire, the want he could not stopper all these days and weeks and months, is nothing – nothing compared to the victory cry of his heart as John rests in his arms.

_Mine._

He knows it first that very moment as the feel of John in his arms imprints on his being and brands his soul. 

To need, to love, to want, to have.

He’s aware that things may be a bit out of order for him, that sexual desire is what brings many together, that love is something that takes time to grow, that must be nurtured. 

Sherlock remembers well the day John walked into his life. He remembers all the entrances and exits, his and John’s alike, but by the end of their first day together, he knew he needed more. They weren’t kindred souls – not precisely – but they were something and life after only one day together was already decidedly better with John than without him.

He supposes he loved John before he had a word for the feeling, before he understood this sentiment that had crept its way into his heart. He couldn’t name this mysterious force that made him both light on his feet and stone cold terrified. 

Love consumed him. Love fueled him. Love sustained him.

Sustained him through Moriarty, through his fall and his absence and through all of Serbia. Sustained him until the moment John pushed back his chair in the restaurant and tackled him. Until John’s body crashed against his own, John’s hands clenched at his shoulders, his neck, wanting to strangle him in anger. Until John’s legs clenched around his torso, holding him down while Mary and the other waiters tried to break them apart. Until those eyes – those angry, hurt, betrayed eyes – stared at him and challenged him. 

Until the threat of losing him was real and touching him awoke a sleeping dragon.

But he tamed the dragon, caged the beast, and settled for something over nothing. 

And waited.

Waited through an engagement, a wedding, a bullet in his heart. It should have bled from him then, all of it, but he found, when he awoke on the other side, that nothing would kill it, that he would suffer the weight of it forever.

He was a godless man who thought the pain just punishment for his sins.

Waited through a child, a flight, a discovery, a death, a sinister game. Waited while John and Rosie moved back to Baker Street, with John so close Sherlock could taste him in the air of the flat and Sherlock learned to calm a crying child and soothe nightmares with quiet lullabies.

Waited. Waited until the time was right and there was no more waiting. Waited until John walked into his arms without hesitation, to Sherlock’s immense and forever surprise, and waltzed with them about the familiar room with only the space of a breath and a child between them.

_Mine_.

His like the comforting, familiar weight of the Belstaff. Like the worn violin tucked beneath his chin. Like the blood warming his veins. 

He still isn’t sure, all these years later, of the order of things, but he’s checked off the boxes in his mind and he knows he’s progressed through stages. They’re four-letter-words, each of them, and laid end to end they spell the beginning and the middle and the ever after that paves the way to the end. 

Need.

Love.

Want.

Have.

_Mine._

John.


	5. It's Five O'Clock Somwehere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock forgets an anniversary but the world does not.

Tuesday was one of those rare days when Sherlock, tasked with an odious case involving a minor royal who’d fallen into the expected sort of trouble minor royals so often do, found himself awake, showered, dressed and out the door before John and Rosie even stirred.

It was a bleak and cheerless day, made all the worse by a confrontation with his brother, and the cold wind that had greeted him when he’d walked out to hail a cab at the crack of dawn was still with him as he made his way back to Baker Street, whipping the corners of his coat and pressing him forward like a persistent hand on his back. He’d rated the case a not-very-promising four when he’d taken it, but had reclassified it as a two by the time he’d identified the blackmailer and located the video. _Tedious_. He promptly deemed the young man in question as not worth adjusting his mind palace to accommodate and deleted him without pause. Thus, a mere forty minutes after leaving Mycroft’s office, he’d already forgotten the man’s name, relationship to the current monarch, and the colossally stupid thing he’d done.

What he’d have liked to forget, the thing Mycroft had literally shoved under his nose, could not be deleted until John got home from work.

He detoured to the shops for milk, if only to give John one small thing to be pleased about when he got in from the clinic, and turned in the direction of 221B, bracing himself against the wind that now blew directly in his face.

He hadn’t expected the small cluster of reporters gathered in front of 221B, but resolutely pushed on. He meant to ignore them – let them take all the photographs they wanted of a man attempting to unlock the door to his flat – but one of them surprised him with a question that cut straight to the heart of the matter.

“So – they got it right this time, didn’t they? It’s actually true.”

He froze, keys in hand.

Yes.

They _had_ got it right. Unbelievably so.

He found himself turning around to face the microphones and cameras. He told himself it was best to take care of it now, get them out of here before John came home and had to deal with them on this of all days.

“Yes – the majority of the story is more or less factual. A thousand random monkeys at typewriters are bound to get it right eventually.”

They ignored his insult and he ignored the rest of their questions – he heard pieces and parts, something about marriage, and something else about adoption, and yet another about how he’d faked his death. Old news and none of your business, he thought as he finally pushed inside and closed the door behind him. 

He was surprised to see Rosie’s pushcart outside Mrs. Hudson’s door, and Mrs. Hudson, holding the sleeping child, standing in the doorway.

“It’s not my day, is it?” he asked, not mentioning that he’d had to push through a throng of reporters to get into the house. He had Rosie on Thursdays – they’d been on that schedule for four months now and there’d never been any variance. He reached for Rosie, but Mrs. Hudson shooed him away.

“Let her sleep a bit more – She finally nodded off thirty minutes ago – those reporters ought to be hauled in for disturbing the peace. Now go on up and deal with him, won’t you? And good – you’ve remembered the milk.”

“John’s home?” Sherlock glanced up the stairs, frowning. “It’s the middle of the day.”

“I don’t know your schedules – I’m not your secretary,” she said briskly, and not very truthfully. She may not be their secretary but she absolutely knew their schedules. “But go on now – he’s in a mood.” 

Sherlock had taken a step toward the stairway, but he stopped and turned back. He’d expected John to be at work when he arrived home, giving him time to prepare for his arrival and for the inevitable explosion. “Mood? What sort of mood?”

Mrs. Hudson frowned at him. “Well, I’d say one of _his_ moods, but he doesn’t really have them, does he? Not like someone else we all know. Not unless something upsets him.” She looked at him significantly.

He stared back.

She gave in. “He wouldn’t come down and talk to them,” she said. “They’ve been here for hours. And what could _I_ tell them? They seem to think I should know your private business.”

“You do know our private business,” he said. “You always know.”

She ignored him, motioning him on. “Go on, now. I’ll keep Rosie down here until you’ve settled it, alright?”

He was halfway up the stairs when she interrupted his progress. “And mind you, Sherlock, be sensitive for a change. You two have a whole month of anniversaries, but this one could have gone by just fine without that awful story.”

He agreed. He could definitely have gone without the reminder that five years ago this very day he’d thrown himself off the roof of St. Bart’s hospital, feigning his own suicide to save the people he loved the most.

He opened the door and stepped cautiously inside the eerily silent flat, then made his way quietly to the sitting room.

John was sitting in the middle of the sofa. He had a half-full glass in his hand and was staring at the skull, which he’d set on a kitchen chair directly in front of him. A bottle of very expensive scotch, a gift from a grateful client some months ago, sat on the floor beside his foot. He was wearing the khakis he wore to work, and an extremely old jumper.

Sherlock stood for a long moment observing, neither moving nor speaking, until John looked over at him and sighed.

“Figured you’d make it home eventually,” he said, lifting his glass in Sherlock’s direction. “Join me?”

Sherlock nodded then ducked into the kitchen to put the milk away and fetch a glass. He sat down beside John and reached for the bottle.

“Are we celebrating or mourning?” he asked as he poured.

“You tell me,” John challenged. He clicked his glass against Sherlock’s and tipped it back, then stared at him, waiting.

“I take it we’re not celebrating my uncanny ability to survive in the face of certain death.” He sipped the scotch and studied John. He didn’t appear inebriated, but he definitely was not on his first glass.

“You didn’t go to work today,” Sherlock commented as he took another sip.

“Brilliant.” John rubbed his hand over his unshaven cheek. “You’re a genius.”

“But you meant to go.” He glanced at John’s khaki’s – he only ever wore that pair to work. “You would have said something last night.”

John laughed, but it was a broken sort of sound. “I wouldn’t have remembered – not this year. Not with how things are now,” John said. He’d dropped his head back and stared at the ceiling. “But it was the first god damn thing I saw on my mobile when I checked the news this morning.”

“You equate the Mirror and news?” Sherlock asked.

John gave another one of those painful, broken laughs.

“Five years.” he tipped his glass and drank again. “Five fucking horrible wonderful ridiculous terrifying glorious years.” He turned his head slowly against the cushions and stared at Sherlock. “Holy fuck, Sherlock – could you at least take off the bloody coat?”

Sherlock shrugged out of the coat without comment and dropped it unceremoniously to the floor, then pushed it out of the way with his foot, as if distancing himself from it would separate him from the act John could not forget, the memory of those coattails flapping in the wind.

The anniversary of Mary’s death had slipped by quietly. They’d acknowledged it, reminisced, passed it rather serenely with an early morning visit to the cemetery and a night in watching a movie with Rosie snuggled asleep on the sofa between them. He hadn’t thought of this particular anniversary until Mycroft had handed him his mobile, photograph of he and John holding Rosie’s hands as they walked through Regent’s Park displayed on the open newsfeed. 

_Five Years after Faked Suicide, Famous Detective no Longer Flying Solo._

And that followed by a surprisingly accurate story recounting the details leading up to the jump, the story of his return, the tragedies John had subsequently endured and the recent developments in their personal relationship.

He’d scanned it quickly then had pushed the phone back toward Mycroft.

“Make it disappear,” he’d ordered. “Preferably before John sees it.”

John hadn’t remembered. He’d been fine last night. Jovial. Normal.

“Even I don’t have the power to instantly wipe the social media reposts of oodles of commoners,” Mycroft replied dryly. “Did you even remember the date, Sherlock?”

Sherlock scowled at him. “No. It’s not important. We’re past that.”

“Ah. _We_.” Mycroft nodded. The smile on his face never reached his eyes. “I see.”

He’d turned his mobile off until noontime, and when he turned it on he looked at John’s blog on a whim. 

Seventeen thousand hits today alone. Fifteen hundred new followers. More than four thousand new comments.

The peace offering of milk seemed paltry indeed, considering the absolute wreckage of this day.

John groped on the floor for the bottle and refilled his glass. His hand shook and Sherlock reached out to steady it.

“It’s early to drink, John,” he said. “Perhaps some other activity will -”

“It’s five o’clock somewhere,” John interrupted, raising his glass and staring at Sherlock until Sherlock reluctantly lifted his own glass to touch John’s. When John spoke, his words were slow and careful and very, very heartfelt.

“To unmitigated bastards who think they know what’s best for me, and to utter cocks who force confessions from me when we’re staring death in the face.” He swallowed, and Sherlock started to pull his glass back but John shook his head. “To pompous asses who interrupt my proposal speech, and to preening peacocks in bespoke suits and shite flatmates who leave the milk out to spoil and users who only shoot up for cases and – no – don’t stop me. Not done quite yet.”

Sherlock’s hand was shaking with the pounding of his heart, but he held steady. This was John’s script. John’s moment.

Sherlock deserved it. He’d earned it.

John took a deep breath and lifted his other hand. It trembled as it came to rest on Sherlock’s cheek. He pulled him forward and Sherlock wondered, for the briefest of moments, whether John was steadying him only to slap him across the face. But John’s lips grazed his then, and he spoke softly against Sherlock’s cheek. “Alright, I think I have that out of my system,” he breathed. He rubbed his nose fondly against Sherlock’s. “So, you denied it all and sent them on their way out there?”

“Sent them on their way, anyway,” Sherlock murmured. “Told them that a thousand monkeys at typewriters were bound to get the story right eventually.”

John stared at him, mouth slightly open in surprise. “You didn’t.”

“I did. We’re not exactly hiding it. It’s surprising it took this long for a slow news day to pop up.”

“I suppose it’s good that all my new followers know you’re off the market now, yeah?”

Sherlock grinned into the kiss, then allowed John a final drink before he took both glasses in hand and set them safely beside the skull. .

“And the rest of London, and outlying areas,” Sherlock said. “And possibly Ireland and the Azores.”

“Probably should have told your parents, then,” John noted.

Sherlock grimaced. “Ouch. They’re going to kill us. They'll see it as having missed several months of grandchild privileges.”

“You’ll survive,” John said, wrapping an arm around Sherlock’s waist and pulling him in closer. The story, the reporters, the memories of a day he’d tried to forget faded against the solid weight of Sherlock beside him. He slowly released a breath then rested his head on the familiar shoulder. “You always do.”


	6. At Sixes and Sevens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "At sixes and sevens" refers to a state of confusion or disarray, and can be used to a state of disagreement between two people.

On the night it happens, the night they don’t talk about, John wants to stay in.

It’s Friday, he’s had a taxing week at the A&E, and Rosie has already gone to Molly’s to mind the boys for the evening. 

So when Sherlock meets him at the door grinning from ear to ear about the case Lestrade has just handed him – an eight, perhaps even a nine – and instructs him to get changed so they can get going, he puts his foot down.

No. He’s tired. He wants dinner. He wants to take his shoes off. He wants a long shower, and a movie after dinner so boring he can fall asleep on the sofa without missing a damn thing.

There’s a staring match, an argument, an attempt at bargaining, a sulk, and then, true to form, John capitulates.

They don’t talk about why John gave in – that’s a good thing. He doesn’t hold his injury over Sherlock’s head, would never do that – not now. Not after all they’ve been through to get over the enormous hurdle of their pasts. And especially not now – considering Sherlock already holds it over his own. He’s never forgiven himself. It’s a burden he carries with him, much as John carries the bullet in his lover’s heart. It will be a long time – a very long time – that John’s cane and John’s limp become a part of John and not a weight compressing Sherlock’s heart.

John doesn’t remember much about those first days, and barely recalls the accident at all. What came before he remembers, though without the anger and frustration of the moment. They spend far too much time at the crime scene, and Sherlock is nearly insufferable with Lestrade’s people. When he gets in a snit with Anderson as they are finally headed to the door, John announces he is leaving, gives Sherlock a last significant look – and leaves.

Miraculously, and without Sherlock, he manages to successfully hail a cab the first try. Unfortunately, the cabbie suffers a massive stroke as they speed down a busy street. And while John hits his head and passes out almost immediately, the concussion he suffers is a side note as his leg takes most of the damage.

John’s story from this point forward is by-the-book predictable. Extraction from the vehicle. Transport in an ambulance to hospital. The first of three surgeries to put repair his shattered leg. Blood loss. Trauma. A morphine-induced haze that lasted longer than it took Sherlock to find him. 

Sherlock’s story is less true to form.

To begin with, he can’t get a taxi. Lestrade, on his way to his car ten minutes after Sherlock left the scene, watches a cab pass without slowing and offers Sherlock a ride. Sherlock shrugs and follows him. Perhaps it is best not to rush home given John’s mood.

And while not rushing seems like a good idea, arriving home two hours later does not. Especially because the second case – the one Lestrade takes up while driving Sherlock back to Baker Street – is a classic (and utterly predictable) locked room murder masquerading as a suicide.

So, two and a half hours after John left the crime scene, Sherlock arrives at Baker Street without his keys.

The argument leading up to their eventual departure together to the crime scene earlier that evening explains the oversight – he’d been distracted when they left and had failed to pocket his keys. But as the flat now appears dark from the street, and Sherlock deduces that John has gone to bed to cement his snit, he phones Mrs. Hudson. It’s far better to wake her than John, considering.

Mrs. Hudson, under the influence of her Friday-night herbal soother, is more than happy to let him in, and doesn’t scold him at all. And no, she hasn’t heard John come in but she’s only been home herself for an hour. Sherlock makes as little noise as possible. He has no reason to drop his keys on the table since he’s left them behind, and he quietly drapes his coat on John’s empty chair and picks up his violin. 

He learned long ago that trying to to talk to John when he’s in a mood is quite useless. No arguing. No reasoning. Logical words are wasted when John’s mind is made up.

But music – music is a different story altogether.

So he plays for John – low and soft and sweet and evocative. Music that soothes, that fills the cracks and knits together the fissures. Music that sounds familiar but that John can’t name; music he’s heard before, sitting there, on his chair, eyes closed, a faint smile on his face.

It isn’t until he puts the violin away that he notices John’s coat is not hanging by the door.

It could have been just a bit more normal in their decidedly not-so-normal lives. Another accident, another misunderstanding, another recovery. Rosie might have come home to find her father nursing a twisted ankle, wrapped foot propped on a pillow. John might have limped from sitting room to kitchen to fetch the tea. Sherlock might have tolerated it for a day or two or three, then broken free from 221B, completely stir-crazy and itching for a case.

But instead, this night – and what follows – is a pivotal turning point in their lives together.

No matter that it takes him hours to notice John is missing, and another frantic hour after that to find him, Sherlock is at his side when he opens his eyes.

And he’s there through the interminable days that follow, the additional surgeries, the consultations with specialists, the discharge to rehab, the temporary move to Mrs. Hudson’s flat. He’s there, months after the accident, right behind John as he carefully – and stubbornly – makes his way up the stairs.

And when Mrs. Hudson is gone, and Molly leaves with Rosie for a girls’ day shopping excursion after carrying everything up from downstairs and setting it up for John in the room he shares with Sherlock, Sherlock busies himself in the kitchen making tea because everything should have been right then, back to order, back to normal. Here they are – Sherlock and John – alone, together, in 221B, just like it had been. Just like it’s supposed to be.

But while the flat is as neat as a pin, and John’s things are all back where they belong from his toothbrush to his dressing gown to the crossword he’d been working that morning at Mrs. Hudson’s, waiting for him beside his chair with a sharpened pencil atop, the differences are stark and glaring to Sherlock. The furniture meticulously adjusted mere inches to make more room, or to give John something to hold on to as he makes his way around the flat. The rail affixed to the bathtub, the traction treads on the stairs leading up. The slightly higher ottoman, to raise John’s leg just a few more inches. The slippers with rubber, no-skid soles. The new medications – blood thinners, pain meds, muscle relaxants. 

He sits on his chair opposite John, on edge, watchful, at sixes and sevens with himself, with this new 221B, with the conviction that it’s _his_ fault, that it’s his responsibility to make it right, to make it work. But knowing – with a certainty borne of utter confidence in his own deductive sensibilities – that everything they’ve done to make it possible for John to live here will not be enough. That the effort to climb those stairs will eventually be too much. That they aren’t getting any younger, and that if the best specialists in London are to be trusted and believed, John will not be climbing any more fire escapes or chasing down criminals, and that even standing against a wall in stealth mode breathing quietly for more than ten minutes will test the limits of his leg. They should be grateful that he can still walk.

And John picks up his crossword and rests his feet on the new ottoman without complaint. He fills in a few words, then looks across at Sherlock, catching him looking back at him.

“Play something,” he says, eyes warm and happy, nodding at the violin against the wall. “I haven’t heard you play in months.”

Sherlock glances at the violin. He hasn’t played since that night, but John has asked him to play, and he can’t refuse him. 

He stands, picks up the instrument, takes some time to tune it, then stares out the window, looking for inspiration. Finding none, he turns back toward John, an excuse ready on his lips.

John is sitting in his chair, looking so at home, more at peace than he’s seen him in weeks and weeks. He’s got a vague sort of smile on his face, and he nods at Sherlock when their eyes meet. Sherlock draws the bow down across the strings and 221B is suddenly their home again, despite the changes, despite the uncertain future. 

Slowly, the music he makes turns from melancholic to joyful, exultant. The chaos, the discord inside, is swallowed by the voice of the violin and emancipated by the look on John’s face. 

He understands, rather late, that John hasn’t only missed 221B. He’s missed Sherlock – this Sherlock. It’s a welcome spot of normal in their upside-down world.

Sherlock plays until he’s banished every fear and misgiving into the far corners of his mind. He’s not wrong – everything will be different from now on. John’s leg will grow stronger, but never quite strong enough. In time, John’s struggles with the stairs will do Sherlock in far before John is ready to give up. They’ll leave 221B and move to a cottage in Sussex. John, not ready for retirement, will take on work at a local clinic. Sherlock will putter in the garden and take up beekeeping. They’ll grow old together there, and Sherlock will play for John on sleepless, melancholic nights when they’re both restless for something more. It will become their new normal, and the weight Sherlock carries with him will feel lighter with time, ballast to stabilize the load he carries instead of anchor to drown him in guilt and might-have-beens.

John will carry his own guilt to the grave.

They still don’t talk about it.


	7. Seventh Heaven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> he r

Seventh Heaven

There comes a day when Sherlock catches John sitting halfway up the staircase, eight steps from the top. He is supposed to be in Cambridge, following a lead in a new case and having dinner with Rosie. He isn’t supposed to be home, and he certainly isn’t meant to find John scooting up the stairs backward on his bum because his leg and hip have given up for the day.

Sherlock steps back and waits, silently, while John continues his slow, upward struggle. He offers John a hand when he reaches the top and steadies him when he is back on his feet.

And while they don’t talk about this – indeed, Sherlock doesn’t say a word about John’s difficulties with the stairs the entire evening, nor does he cater to him unnecessarily – it marks both the beginning of the end and the start of something entirely new and ultimately wonderful.

It's convenient that Sherlock will see Rosie the very next day. She’s midway through her first year at Cambridge, and if Sherlock hadn’t been presented with the heart-wrenching image the day before of John lifting himself up backward, stair by stair, to 221B, he might not have mentioned John’s injury at all. But now it’s the only thing on his mind, having supplanted both the case and Rosie. 

“It’s time,” he tells Rosie, and she nods stoically, but there’s a tear in her eye when they hug goodbye at the train station. 

Sherlock’s not averse to using Mycroft when Mycroft is most needed, and traipsing all over the Sussex countryside in search of the perfect retirement abode with John’s bad leg is not in the cards for John and Sherlock. So he labours over a list – the must haves, the nice-but-not-necessaries, the absolute deal-breakers. He wants to choose from no more than a dozen properties so he straightens his back and holsters his pride and visits his brother – actually _visits_ him – to discuss the next steps.

Mycroft knows people – the right people – and he knows his brother, and he knows John Watson. In the space of four days, he culls through the properties that his people present him and personally chooses the best twelve. He studies the listings, the photos, consults maps, researches the towns and villages nearby, and on the fourth day presents a folio of potential properties to Sherlock. He’s included one that’s an absolute no, and another probably-not, but has done so intentionally so that Sherlock can roll his eyes and toss it aside. But the remainder are all viable. While Sherlock pushes the plan forward, he begins preliminary work to assess each potential site from a security vantage.

Rosie surprises them with an unannounced visit the following Friday evening, and after hugs and kisses they catch up over dinner. Sherlock brings out the folio as they settle in with coffee after. He’s already thrown out the multi-level property with the public footpath crossing the property, but left in the cottage that needs extensive repairs. John looks suspicious, but consents to looking up each property on his mobile and scrolls through the photos, and Rosie leans over his shoulder and offers an occasional “Oh Dad – that’s just lovely.”

He isn’t sold, not even three hours later when they’re still at it in the sitting room, but wakes up too early on Saturday morning to jarring sirens in the street and decides that a trip to Sussex might be acceptable – just to take a look. And it’s a good thing he’s come to that conclusion, because Sherlock has already made the arrangements to see some of the properties the next day, and some on Monday, before they return to London so John can cover his shift on Tuesdsay. 

John decides to try not to let Rosie’s preferences influence him. He’s accepted that she’s nearly grown and gone, and while she’ll visit them – often, he hopes – she’ll likely not live with them again. He measures the distance in his head between Cambridge and London, Cambridge and Sussex, Sussex and wherever it is that Rosie will eventually settle. 

He looks around the familiar flat that’s been his home for twenty years. He considers the seventeen stairs that lead down to the flat where Mrs. Hudson lived. He can hear her steps on the stairs, her call at the door. He can almost see her in the shadowy stillness of early morning, shoulder against the wood to press open the door, balancing a tea tray, as at home in 221B as John or Sherlock.

He isn’t an overly sentimental man, more prone to lose his temper than to shed a tear, but 221B seems less like home now without Rosie, without Mrs. Hudson. 

_Change._

Perhaps it _is_ time. Time to leave London. Sherlock’s been talking about it for years, but always in a not-too-soon-but-someday sort of way. He’s been talking about beekeeping too, and investigating village vicars who, if the BBC is to believed, are nearly always hiding great secrets if they’re not doing a bit of crime solving on their own. John’s only been thinking of it for a year or so, but only because Sherlock has started to complain about life in London.

John knows what he’s up to. He’s no fool, and even though Sherlock puts on a very convincing show, John doesn’t really believe that he is tired of the dirty streets and alleys, or worried about the rising crime statistics, or getting too old for the hustle and bustle, or one half as intrigued by dodgy vicars as he pretends. It’s all for John, and the only thing that rings true is his fixation on bees and hives and his stated plans to install a half dozen and take up beekeeping. 

So by Saturday evening, Rosie is back at school and they’re installed in a hotel in Chichester, which no one – not even Sherlock – can claim is centrally located on the spiraling map of properties they’ve narrowed down. But perhaps this is the plan all along, because by Sunday evening John knows they’ll need a week of Sundays to examine all the properties if Sherlock continues to scrutinize all of them to the level he’s done the first two.

Well – perhaps not an entire week of Sundays, but at least five or six. He calls in for the rest of the week and changes the train tickets to Friday.

He and Mary picked out a place of their own once upon a time, but he hadn’t really cared where they lived, as long as the work commute was manageable, and he certainly hadn’t even considered stairs, or the lack thereof. Before Mary, and after 221B, there’d been a flat. A perfectly serviceable and utterly forgettable place that he’d taken with not much more than a cursory glance. It was nowhere near 221B, and close enough to work, and those were the only two criteria he’d set.

And here he is, going on sixty years old, examining foundations, admiring crown moulding, opening dampers and measuring closet space. He finds himself enjoying the process immensely as the idea of actually living in a real house, with the sea so close you could nearly taste it in the air, takes root in his soul. 

He likes most of the houses they see, but nothing speaks to him in quite the way he’d anticipated. He stands back while Sherlock explores – opening cabinets, peaking under beds, tapping on walls, asking inappropriate questions and deducing the history of the homes and their current owners. 

On Tuesday they end the day with a rambling cottage with ill-placed rooms but situated on the perfect piece of land. They discuss it over dinner – can the cottage be remodeled? Expanded? Sherlock is worried that the level changes inside – a step or two or three here and there – are exactly what they don’t need but he can’t deny that the hives would flourish on that beautiful piece of heaven.

They leave the restaurant undecided, oversleep in the morning, and head to their first appointment of the day on a near-run.

This one isn’t on the original list. It’s just come on the market, and their estate agent thinks they might like to have a look. They’ve not seen photographs or layouts or square footage or even price, but they’ve decided to give it a go on her recommendation.

John has a good feeling before Sherlock stops the car at the end of the drive. He has a good feeling when he sees the tangled ivy, the polished windows, the freshly painted door. It’s a bit mismatched on the outside, asymmetrical, with an equal mix of quaint old features and more modern upgrades. John is oddly drawn to it, but when they’re shown inside, and walk through a short corridor into the sitting room, he stops in his tracks and his mouth falls open and he turns around to look at Sherlock, who’s looking past him into the sitting room and staring at the familiar wallpaper.

There’s no way they’ll say no, not with the wallpaper, and the familiar layout, and the modern appliances in the spacious and otherwise old-fashioned kitchen. Not with the old footed tub and the modern shower, the perfect yard for the bees, and the ocean so close they can walk there in the morning with their coffee or tea and still drink it warm when they arrive. There’s privacy, and a separate garage, a shed for supplies, and beautiful trees. It’s not too far from town, but not too close either. Both of their mobiles have excellent signals, and the wiring is new. The house is charming and startlingly familiar. But it isn’t missing Mrs. Hudson or Rosie, and doesn’t have a single stair, and better yet, there’s not a CCTV camera in sight.

Arranging the purchase takes what’s left of the week, and they visit again before they return to London, to this little bit of heaven on earth, and John looks at Sherlock on his hands and knees in the garden as he examines the soil and laughs.

“You’re in seventh heaven, Sherlock,” he says, giving him a steadying hand as Sherlock stands again. 

“Seventh?” Sherlock frowns and considers, taking the phrase more literally than it was intended. “Third,” he corrects with a smile, but he doesn’t offer any explanation.

“It’s just a phrase – an idiom,” John explains as they walk together toward the shed to examine the door that’s lost a hinge. It’s the sort of repair neither of them has ever done, but one of them at least will learn to do, he imagines. One of them named John, he thinks.

Sherlock hums, and bends to examine the rotted wood around the loose screws.

“Why third?” John asks after a bit. Sherlock has already engineered a solution to secure the hinge on the shed in the yard of the home they don’t quite own yet. He realises he’s wrong about household repairs and who’ll be doing them. 

“You came to me at Baker Street, and then you came back with Rosie, and now….” He trails off and gestures at their surroundings. “Though I suppose you'll have at least seven....”

“Seven?”

“Seven heavens – you must have loved your childhood home, and the home you shared with Mary, not to mention the ….”

John is shaking his head with one of those fond smiles, the sort he reserves only for Sherlock. Sherlock raises an eyebrow at his muttered “idiot” and shrugs.

“Seven hives, then?” he says, and John laughs and rolls his eyes. He forgets about his leg, and the life they’ll be leaving behind, and how long the train ride is from Sussex to Cambridge. Heaven isn’t a place – it’s Sherlock Holmes. He laughs at the irony, knows that no one else in the world would agree.

But he’s good with that. He’s absolutely fine.


	8. The Eighth Wonder of the World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John William Watson is no ordinary infant.

The Great Pyramid of Giza is impressive and enduring, the lighthouse of Alexandria strong and long-standing. The statue of Zeus honoured the founder of the Olympic games, while the Colossus of Rhodes was, indeed, colossal. Hanging gardens, temples, mausoleums – all great in their own right while they endured, but nothing – nothing – will ever compare to a tiny eight-pound bundle named John William Watson.

John occasionally has to remind Sherlock that they’d had another baby all those years ago – a daughter named Rosie whom Sherlock had thought quite wonderful in her own right. The sun rose and set in her eyes and the stars formed a crown about her wispy blonde halo. But Sherlock is quick to remind him that when Rosie was a delightful clean slate at eight pounds, John had been a tangled ball or nerves and he hadn’t been Sherlock’s, thus Rosie hadn’t been Sherlock’s either. John very much wants to remind Sherlock that Sherlock had been named godfather but hadn’t taken the job very seriously at first. John wonders if Sherlock has deleted the baptism, but it’s best to let these things go. Afterall, once he had started to take the job seriously, he’d never once faltered.

John doesn’t admit to Sherlock that even he finds little William to be the eighth wonder of the world. He’s in a better place now, and the memory of his wife’s past and Sherlock’s near death at her hands has faded with time, glazed over with the life they began together on the day they waltzed across the floor with Rosie between them.

“Don’t you get bored just sitting there holding him?” John asks Sherlock when William is ten days old and they’re staying at Rosie’s flat for the weekend so she can get some sleep.

“I’m not merely holding him,” Sherlock replies. His voice is very, very low. It’s butter soft and melty and directed not at John at all, but at the sleeping baby resting on his legs.

John holds a finger out and works it gently against his grandson’s clenched fingers. They open and promptly close around the finger and John smiles as if the child has expressed a preference for him above all others.

“What are you doing, then?” he asks as he looks on the peaceful-for-now tableau. He doesn’t see that they form an odd little triangle, all three of them connected with Sherlock running a finger down Will’s perfect little foot while Will clutches John’s finger and John rests his free hand on Sherlock’s shoulder.

“Observing. Learning. Cataloguing,” replies Sherlock. “He has your upper lip, John. If we’re gone by the time he sprouts facial hair, someone will have to be sure he doesn’t grow a mustache. It will look just as atrocious as yours did.”

John opens his mouth to gently chide Sherlock – of course they’ll be here when Will goes through puberty. After all, he’s not much past sixty now and Sherlock’s a few years behind him. But the words die on his tongue, unvoiced. Instead, he shakes his head.

“My mustache wasn’t so bad,” he says instead. “Mary liked it.”

“No she didn’t,” Sherlock corrects, eyes still on the prize he’s scored by beating John up the stairs and meeting a haggard-looking Rosie at the door, having left John to navigate the stairs on his own after calling back “Take your time with the stairs” as he raced up two at a time. He brushes the soft wisps of brown hair back from the baby’s forehead and traces his finger along the scant hairline.

“Why are you doing that?” John asks, because with Sherlock, there’s always a reason.

“Learning him, John, as I’ve already said,” he answers. He tilts his head, studying the tiny head from several angles, then smooths the hair back down and looks intently at the corners of small William’s eyes. His knees are next – chubby and cherubic, they look like every knee on every baby to John, though even he can see that they’re particularly shapely and well-formed on this particular model.

William opens his eyes a few minutes later, but only after a dissatisfied scrunch and stretch. He doesn’t cry – not yet, at least – but John fetches the bottle Rosie’s left for this feeding and warms it in a cup of hot water. He’s back before five minutes are up, the bottle at just the right temperature, and Sherlock repositions the beautiful bundle of baby in the crook of his arm and expertly feeds him one-handed, as if he’d spent the last six months practicing for this moment.

He did not.

But John can’t say a word because Sherlock and William are staring at each other. John knows a baby of this age can’t focus out beyond a foot or so, but is quite certain Sherlock hasn’t rearranged enough in his overstuffed brain to accommodate this fact. He lets him have his moment, this moment, and sits on the ottoman before him.

“I think I have it,” says Sherlock as William finishes the bottle. He hands the empty bottle to John and lifts the baby to his shoulder to burp him. John knows – he absolutely knows – that Sherlock has been watching instructional videos on caring for an infant, most certainly while John is doing one of his relief shifts at the clinic. “I think I’ll recognize him anywhere.”

“I doubt you’ll to have to pick him out of a lineup,” says John gently as he takes the just-burped child from Sherlock and snuggles him against his chest. He knows that Sherlock isn’t worried about a lineup, but about things much, much more insidious.

“But I could if I _had_ to,” Sherlock insists. 

“Well, if he gets mixed up with other babies in the nursery we’ll call you in,” John says lightly. He won’t go there. He refuses to go to those dark corners Sherlock’s mind is edging.

Sherlock softens. Brightens. “An excellent idea. Do you know any other babies so I can have a go?”

John shakes his head fondly. He’s gazing down at a very sleepy William, whose beautiful muddy blue eyes are beginning to close. He can’t help but see his mother in them, and remember days pacing the floor with her, at the house he shared with Mary and then at 221B. He remembers the weight of her in his arms, the warmth of her small body as he paced with her on his shoulder after Mary’s death, soothing her but really – really – soothing himself. He remembers dancing, moving purposefully into Sherlock’s arms that fateful night, Rosie a soft and warm bundle between them.

It’s a moment that’s stayed with him all of his life after, the dazzling moment of clarity when the stars aligned and the earth’s orbit – and John’s heart - skipped a beat in unison, giving in to the gravitational pull of the new center of the universe. The moment…the feeling…being in the right place at exactly the right time, catching Sherlock at his very best with Rosie, then sliding sideways into their private moment, claiming the family that was his for the taking.

“Take him a moment,” he murmurs. He presses a kiss to his grandson’s head and passes the baby to Sherlock. He carefully gets to his feet and sorts out his leg, then thumbs through his mobile and places it on the table. He’s still fiddling with the volume when the music begins, and he smiles at the tune, still familiar after all these years.

“You’ve still got that.” 

“Of course I have it,” John replies, holding out a hand as the sweet and melancholic lullaby from another day rises around them.

They dance in the sitting room, tiny eight-pound bundle of sleeping William cradled between them. He’s the eighth wonder of the world. They’ve marveled at a fragile new life before, raised Rosie from infant to woman, but Will is a poignant reminder that they’re not the same men they were then. That years have carved them into a different-shaped package, that aches and ills have dulled the edges of wonder, turned their focus too inward.

William will learn the melody looping from John’s mobile, though he’ll love it most on the violin. He’ll know it means to go fetch a book and snuggle on the sofa with one grandfather or the other and often with both. And sometimes he’ll fall asleep on his granddad’s shoulder as they sway lazily around the sitting room. His world is very small now, but theirs has expanded tenfold.

The Great Pyramid of Giza is impressive and enduring, the lighthouse of Alexandria strong and long-standing. The statue of Zeus honoured the founder of the Olympic games, while the Colossus of Rhodes was, indeed, colossal. Hanging gardens, temples, mausoleums all great in their own right while they endured, but nothing – nothing – will ever compare to a tiny eight-pound bundle named John William Watson.


	9. The Ninth Circle of Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is not going to the Met gala - and Mycroft can't make him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter wraps around the events of the "T" chapter in "The Alphabet Vignettes - "T is for Tomorrows." Please read that chapter first as it refers to an event in this story that may be a trigger for some.

“Oh for God’s sake!” Sherlock hurled his mobile at the sofa. It bounced and slid across the keyboard of John’s laptop, fell onto the sofa and dropped into the gap between seat cushion and armrest.

“Problem?” John frowned at the screen and backspaced to remove the random characters left by the phone’s impact on his keyboard. It wasn’t exactly unusual that Sherlock would throw his expensive mobile phone across the room, and he usually did aim for the sofa so that he could have the satisfaction of throwing it without the probability of damaging it beyond repair. But he seemed particularly vexed this time and didn’t move to recover his device quickly as was his custom in such snits.

“Yes, there’s a problem!” Sherlock dropped heavily into his chair and stared at John as if John were solely responsible for whatever it was that had caused him to hurl his mobile at the sofa.

John saved his document and closed his laptop very deliberately. He leaned back, folded his arms over his chest and waited.

“Mycroft is insisting I attend the annual Met soiree.”

John scoffed. “So don’t go. Tell him no. I don’t see what the problem is.”

“The problem is that he’s a prick.” Sherlock scowled and pulled his knees up against his chest. John was forever incredulous that Sherlock, now almost 68, was still able to get into that position. And that he referred to his 75-year old brother as a prick.

“He’s always been a prick so that shouldn’t surprise you.”

“It doesn’t surprise me. Nor does it surprise me that he still believes he can order me to do something I clearly don’t want to do. He says I don’t have a choice.” He spoke in an exaggerated, condescending voice that did sound quite a bit like Mycroft’s. “I’m not asking you to go, I’m telling you you must. Honorees must attend.”

“Wait – honorees? What are you talking about?” John frowned and looked suspiciously at Sherlock. “What exactly haven’t you told me yet, Sherlock?

Sherlock had the audacity to look affronted. “Nothing. Nothing important, anyway.”

But John narrowed his eyes at Sherlock and opened his laptop. 

“Honestly, John – I Just….”

“Stop.” John gave him a warning glare, navigated to the Met’s homepage, and clicked on the _Meet This Year’s Honorees_ link.

“The Met Citizen Award?” he exclaimed after the page loaded. “He glanced at the article then turned his attention back to Sherlock. “_Both_ of you?”

“Does it really matter?” Sherlock sounded completely bored at the prospect of the very prestigious award. “I’m not going to the gala and – what?”

John, who’d been scanning the webpage, closed his laptop again and stood up. Standing up was not easy for John, and Sherlock usually gave him a hand if he was nearby. When John stood up, John had somewhere to go, or some point to prove.

“Lestrade is _finally_ retiring for good, Mycroft is being awarded the Citizen of the Year award and you - _you_ Sherlock Holmes – are being honoured with a lifetime achievement award.” John could look much, much taller and seriously imposing when he was acting as judge and jury. “You’re going,” he stated. “_I’m_ going. Rosie is going.” He rested a hand on the arm of the sofa for support and dug beside the cushion until he located Sherlock’s mobile. He unlocked it without explaining how he knew the pin and rang up Mycroft, turning on the device’s speaker as he settled back into his chair with a groan.

Sherlock grimaced but didn’t move. He drew his knees up even closer to his chest, arms encircling them and staring at John with a disinterested and silent resignation John did not believe for a heartbeat.

“Drama queen,” John mouthed at him while he waited for Mycroft to answer.

“Hello John.”

“Could be me!” shouted Sherlock from across the room.

“But it isn’t,” replied Mycroft. “Because you’ve tossed your mobile at the sofa and John has retrieved it. Thank you for that, John. I assume you’ve heard the news, then?”

“Read it on the Met’s website more like,” John responded. “Congratulations, then. How long have you known?”

“Thank you, John. The list was only posted this morning, but I was notified two weeks ago.”

John glared at Sherlock, mouthing _two weeks_ and shaking his head.

“You’re hardly a citizen, Mycroft,” Sherlock called out.

“Remind my brother I’m being honoured for defusing a situation I walked into blindly, as a private citizen,” Mycroft said without rancor. “And that my award does nothing to diminish his.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, but John knew there was more than a grain of truth in what Mycroft wasn’t saying.

“He knows that – he’s just being … difficult.”

“He’s being Sherlock,” Mycroft announced decisively.

“I’m being rational,” Sherlock declared. “I have other plans for that day. John and I are going on holiday.”

“We are not going on holiday in September. We’re going on holiday in August.”

“I’ll reserve the guest seats, shall I?” Mycroft asked, tuning out his brother’s excuses. “I assume it will just be you and Rosie, then,” he said. “William is far too young for a formal affair such as this.”

Sherlock looked up sharply and John silently congratulated his brother-in-law. Mycroft really was brilliant, in a devious sort of way.

“Right – just the two of us. William would be disruptive.”

“Exactly.” Sherlock sounded a tiny bit suspicious, as if the win had come far too easily. “And as I’m not about to attend the event without my entire family, they’ll have to find someone else to fawn over.”

“Well, you heard him Mycroft. Three of us, then – if you have room on your guest list.”

“I’m not going,” Sherlock insisted.

“Alright – two of us. I’ll go up to London that Friday and stay over with Rosie. Sherlock can stay here and look after the bees.”

Sherlock leaned forward, hands steepled below his chin. “You don’t seriously intend to go for _Mycroft_, do you?”

John frowned at Sherlock and spoke into the phone. “Would you like us to be there, Mycroft?” he asked.

“Very much,” answered Mycroft.

Sherlock looked quite put out. He let out a long huff.

“And I’d very much like young William to attend as well. He’ll be far better-behaved without Sherlock there to distract him.”

“It’s not working,” Sherlock said. “That ceremony will be worse than the ninth circle of hell. I’m still not going.”

ooOOOoo

John could have predicted that Sherlock would attend the ceremony.

He would never have predicted that Mycroft would not.

It was a subdued and somber Sherlock Holmes who accepted Mycroft’s posthumous award along with his own. 

“Well, Mycroft, you always win, don’t you?” he said as the applauding crowd settled back in their seats. “Here I am even though the last thing you ever heard me say was ‘I’m still not going.’”

He stood in silence as the quiet laughter ebbed, staring at the medal he’d been handed. 

“I wasn’t there when he died and couldn’t have stopped it from happening had I’d been. But fortunately for the Placido family – who were enjoying a Sunday outing in the park – Mycroft was strolling by on his way to stick his nose in some important government business that was really none of his business at all when they most needed someone’s help.”

There was another very long pause as he stared into the box with it’s velvet lining and ornate medal.

“Mycroft would have loved this,” he said. “He’d have worn it around his neck like a medical alert device. He’d have taken it off before bed and kissed it and placed it in a custom-designed bedside shrine." He smiled, and John, gripping Rosie’s hand, blinked back ridiculous tears. “And I’d have constantly reminded him that my medal was bigger.” He held the two up together. “John will do something appropriate with mine. Wrap it up and pass it down to our grandson, perhaps. But I’ll take care of Mycroft's – put it in a place of honour. Give him the respect now that I never showed him during life.”

It was an odd speech, one that left the audience a bit out of sorts, but it was perfectly Sherlock, and the crowd applauded, and he took his seat beside John and squeezed his other hand.

And when they arrived home the next day, after Sherlock had a bit too much to drink and admitted that Mycroft had never been very fat at all, he tucked his award inside a drawer beside their bed, but he hung Mycroft’s around the skull on the mantel, then went directly outside to tend to the bees.


	10. Top Tens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chapter 10 now REPOSTED IN ITS ENTIRITY
> 
> THANK YOU to the commentor who pointed out that the chapter ended in mid-stream. An italics tag left open somehow prevented the rest of the story from pasting in. How anti-climatic. It made absolutely no sense and my apologies go out to the 100 or so of you who must have been left puzzled (and mostly likely won't even know I screwed up and the chapter didn't end at a ridiculous place.
> 
> So from here - my original summary now stands -
> 
> And so ends the story and the series. "Top Tens" is the last chapter of the story, and the last chapter of John and Sherlock's days. If you read "The Alphabet Vignettes," you may remember "K is for Kiss" where John saves William's small friend by realizing he is ill and ultimately donating bone marrow to save him. The end of that chapter introduced, in a gentle way, the inevitable end of days for John and Sherlock. You'll find humor here, and sadness, but ultimately, I hope, enduring love. 
> 
> Thanks for all your kind comments.

It was a game they played, now they were old men and stayed at home nearly all the time and rarely went up to London except for specialist’s appointments. It was about reminiscing, and remembering, and reliving the past, something they found they never quite tired of.

“Top ten cases,” Sherlock said from the sofa where he was stretched out with a book on his chest. “No particular order.”

“The Magpie Murder,” John responded immediately, eyes still on the newspaper he was holding.

“Boring,” responded Sherlock, almost before John had the words out. “Number one is decidedly The Tower Terror.”

John scoffed. “Only because I got dangled over the side of the walkway on the Tower Bridge completely starkers. You solved that one in three hours, Sherlock. You only picked it because it embarrassed me so much.”

Sherlock hummed. “Alright.” He shifted a bit and the book slid off his chest onto the floor, unnoticed. “The Loch Ness Nasty.”

John, who’d been doing the crossword, put down his pencil. “Hmm – agreed. Definitely one of the top ten. Though your Belstaff….”

“Don’t remind me,” groused Sherlock. “New one, then?”

“We’ve hardly done ten,” said John, returning to his crossword and lamenting Sherlock’s increasingly short attention span. 

“You choose this time,” insisted Sherlock.

“Fine – top ten visits to the A&E.” He looked at Sherlock triumphantly, then gave his attention back to the puzzle.

“Top ten visits to the A&E? What kind of memory are you hoping to relive? Me getting stitches in my arse?”

“Definitely in the top ten but not number one,” John said with a satisfied chuckle.

Sherlock refused to play for an entire three minutes, and John filled in two more answers while he patiently waited.

“When Rosie was born,” said Sherlock at last. “When I dislocated both shoulders trying to get out of the strait jacket. When you needed stitches on your head and they shaved off all the hair on one side of your skull.”

“My turn.” John could give as good as he got. “When Rosie stuck the carrot up your nose and it wouldn’t come out. When Mrs. Hudson got chemical burns on her hand when she tried to clean up your experiment. When Rosie stuck the miniature teacup up your nose and it wouldn’t come out. Sherlock – you really do have an over-large nose.”

“That’s quite enough of that one,” Sherlock interrupted. “My turn – top ten wonderful things about bees.”

John soured. “When they swarm,” he said.

“While I admit that the sight of an entire hive creating a new queen then leaving the first hive en masse to seek new quarters is impressive, it does leave me with nothing for all the hard work I’ve put in.”

“Nothing except no bee stings and more time to spend with me,” John said idly. His eyes were still on the puzzle and he wasn’t looking at Sherlock.

Sherlock shrugged. It was an old argument, and he only had the one hive now and it hardly kept him away from John at all. Besides, his arms and hands were so accustomed to stings he hardly felt them anymore.

“I’ll list them all then, since you’re such a spoil sport. The smell of the hive, their intricate society, that they never sleep, that they’re the only animal that produces something consumed by humans, that they are responsible for 80% of all pollination, they’re super navigators, they can recognize human faces, they …”

“Isn’t that ten already?” asked John with a sigh.

“Hardly.”

“You only get nine anyway since I did one.”

“Yours didn’t count.’

“Did too – how about a new topic? Top ten articles of clothing you bought for Rosie.”

Sherlock brightened, forgetting about his beloved bees. “Oh – good one, John. It was so fun to shop for her – she was hardly the traditional little girl, our Rosie. Can we do William next?”

John laughed. “I know that list already – every single piece of beekeeping gear. Do Rosie.”

“The spelunker’s helmet. She hardly ever took it off.”

“She tried to sleep in it,” John reminisced with a fond smile. “Good lord, Sherlock. She was only four!”

“Five,” corrected Sherlock. 

“Personally, I preferred the Belle-Staff.”

“Ah.” Sherlock signed and John watched his face relax into a pleased smile. “I’m sure you don’t want to know how much I paid my tailor to recreate that.”

“And to resize it at least three times as she grew,” John added. “And you’re nowhere near ten yet, Sherlock. How about the bee costume – the one with the pollen sacs? I can’t begin to tell you all the things I’d find in those pouches when I washed that thing.”

Sherlock grinned. “Remember the anti-gravity shoes?”

John chuckled. “An accident waiting to happen. How about the Speedo Faskin? You were convinced she’d be an Olympic swimmer. You must have spent ….”

“It was a knock-off,” Sherlock admitted with a matching chuckle. 

“Fine – the Sumo wrestling gear, then?” John shuddered. “I’m glad that was a short-lived phase.”

“I have one,” said Sherlock after a long, comfortable pause in which they each tried to wipe the image of Rosie in that giant diaper-like monstrosity from their brains. “Top ten places we’ve had sex.”

“Hmmm.” John seemed interested. “Do you mean the ten places where we had sex most frequently, or the most unusual places?”

“Unusual,” Sherlock clarified. “Like under the stands at Rosie’s swim meet.”

“We didn’t, you berk. We _caught_ that young couple going at it there.”

“Really? It seemed like it was us,” Sherlock noted with a bit of disappointment. “Were we really that boring?”

“If you call going at it on Mycroft’s breakfast table while he was showering boring,” John answered with a roll of his eyes. “Or in that hot air balloon drifting over Yorkshire after the pilot…uh….bailed.”

“He was a very bad pilot,” Sherlock commented.

“A very bad pilot who very much wanted us dead,” John added. “Still, you managed to get the balloon down after I buggered you rather senseless.”

“Mycroft’s bed, Molly’s bed, under an empty table at Molly’s wedding, the roof of 221B, Mrs. Hudson’s coat cupboard, the alley behind Angelo’s, in that tunnel connecting that old manor house with the caretaker’s cottage and on the beach during the eclipse. There, ten.”

“Eclipse?” John asked, looking at Sherlock oddly.

“Yes – on the beach – when we went to see the shooting stars.”

“Not an eclipse,” John said with a sigh. “Have you deleted astronomy again?”

Sherlock shrugged, uncaring. “Your turn.”

“Last one, then,” John said. “I need to make tea and you need your meds.”

“Meds schmeds,” Sherlock protested lightly. “Go on – another set.”

“Last one then,” John insisted.

“Fine – it had better be good then.”

John took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Ten fitting places to scatter my ashes.”

Sherlock turned his head slowly and stared at John. John stared back with a gentle smile. They didn’t talk about this – about John’s diagnosis. About how much time he might have left. They didn’t dwell on it, didn’t change their lives in any appreciable way other than to spend even more time with each other, if that was even possible. They didn’t talk about final resting places, or what one would do without the other. By mutual, unvoiced consent, they continued forward, one day – one lifetime – at a time.

“You’re not going to die before me,” Sherlock said, his voice barely audible.

“I’d better,” John returned, eyes shining. “Considering I have the terminal diagnosis and you don’t.”

“You might have years.” Sherlock’s voice was obstinate.

“Or months. No matter – we’re both going to die eventually Sherlock. Where do you want to scatter my ashes?”

He put his newspaper down and used his cane to push himself to a standing position, then took three careful steps and lowered himself to the end of the sofa as Sherlock bent his knees to give him room. 

“From the roof of St. Paul’s Cathedral,” Sherlock began, voice catching as he spoke. “And Rosie and William will do the same for me when I join you.”

John squeezed Sherlock’s foot. “Fitting – we certainly spent enough time on the streets of London.

“Into the ocean – right here beyond our own garden. So you’d wash back up on the shore and I could sit with you while the sun sets.”

“Ah – now you’re being romantic,” John said, running a wrinkled finger over the sensitive arch of the same foot.

“I’d take you on a walk-about and send you over the white cliffs of Dover.” Sherlock pressed his toes into John’s thigh. “You’d land on a sunbathing mermaid and ride with her to the bottom of the sea.”

“Fanciful,” John said, his face relaxing into a smile. “Though I gave up on maids some time ago, Sherlock.”

“Ah – noted.” Sherlock hummed a bit as he continued to press his toes into John’s oh-so-familiar leg. “Rose and William and I will buy a hot-air balloon. We won’t need to dispense with the pilot because William will learn how to navigate. We’ll scatter you over the Channel and perhaps the currents will carry you to Argentina.

“Could you wait and have William and Rosie scatter us together, then? You can speak Spanish but I can’t.”

“And miss a perfectly good balloon ride?” Sherlock steepled his hands and rested his chin on his fingertips. “Number five – We’ll pack them into a fireworks rocket and sneak you into the display at the next Coronation. You’d explode over Buckingham Palace and rain down on all the royals and ruin their fascinators.”

“You may have to keep me in storage for a bit, then. The current king seems fairly healthy.”

“One never knows,” Sherlock said. “Well, how about our own garden here? In the perennials bed, perhaps?”

“Hmph. To help out the bees, eh? I see where you’re going with this one.”

Sherlock sat up, curling his long body around until he’d managed to reverse his position and rest his head in John’s lap.

“Number six,” he said as he made himself comfortable. “Stuffing your ashes in the pockets of my coat and wading into the Themes.”

“You can’t possibly know that reference,” John said, eying Sherlock suspiciously.

Sherlock ignored him. “Seven – wrapping one of your jumpers around them and using them for a pillow.”

“Macabre,” John noted. He considered a moment. “Which jumper, then?”

“Your cashmere pull-over,” Sherlock answered. 

“All my jumpers now are cashmere pull-overs,” John reminded him. “The old ones were stolen in that break-in a few years ago.”

Sherlock’s eyes were closed, but he slowly opened them and stared at John.

“John – about that….”

“Don’t bother, you idiot.” John ran his hand through Sherlock’s wispy hair. “I went along with your cock and bull story, but no robber worth his salt would steal my jumpers.”

“I’m not exactly sorry,” Sherlock admitted. “The cashmere is much nicer.”

John’s laughter turned into a cough, and it took a moment to catch his breath again. “While all of your ideas are brilliant, why don’t we skip to ten?” John suggested as his hand continued to card slowly through Sherlock’s hair. “You pick somewhere for me – somewhere you and Rosie and William enjoy visiting. No monuments please, and no one else -just the three of you. I don’t care where – you can put me in the round pound in Kensington Gardens if you’d like – as long as you join me there eventually.”

Sherlock tilted his head back until his eyes were locked with John’s.

“Wait for me?” he pleaded in a broken sort of voice.

John wiped away the tear that welled up in the corner of Sherlock’s eye. They remained like that, eyes locked, motionless, until John bent with difficulty and brushed his lips against Sherlock’s.

“Hold on for a year or two – will you?” he whispered. “For Rosie?”

Sherlock swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded, and turned his head to burrow his face in the comforting, familiar smell of John Watson.

They didn’t speak of it again.

_Fin_

_From “K is for Kiss” from “The Alphabet Vignettes”_

Forty years later, a grown man will visit a small pocket park off the beaten track in London. He’s done well for himself, and has set up an endowment to maintain this little spot of green. There’s a dancing fountain for the children, comfortable benches for the parents, and winding paths full of flowers that attract butterflies and bees.

Sherlock and John are long gone now. John didn’t want a granite memorial, or weeping mourners, so Rosie and William and Sherlock brought him here. Emilio, twenty-two and just out of Uni, knelt with them in a circle around a hole in the ground and scattered his ashes beneath the roots of an apple tree. The tree bears fruit each year, and every year Emilio comes on the first Sunday in September and chooses an apple and eats it as he cleans the plaque beneath the tree. It’s his own appointed mission, because he doesn’t want to forget, and sometimes Rosie comes, and sometimes William, and always he feels the ghost of Sherlock whispering at his back.

_For John Watson, and all the tomorrows he gave me._

Sherlock had liked the sentiment, had told Emilio that he might just borrow it for himself for a while. He hadn’t needed it for long – hadn’t, in fact enjoyed many tomorrows after John’s passing. He’d faded away within a year, and Rosie and William had scattered his ashes under the tree, then they’d spread out Sherlock’s magnificent coat on the ground and had a picnic in the sunshine.

Emilio chooses an apple, polishes it on his shirt, and bites into its golden flesh. It tastes like sunshine, and life, and bright stars in dark skies. It tastes like gentle rain, and warm hugs, and the glorious discovery of a new and wonderful friend.

It takes of hope. Of life. Of rebirth.


End file.
